


All Secrets of Past Tense

by malapropism



Category: Brideshead Revisited - All Media Types
Genre: First Time, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-22
Updated: 2016-09-22
Packaged: 2018-08-16 16:00:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,155
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8108599
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/malapropism/pseuds/malapropism
Summary: In which Charles and Sebastian fall prey to that strange Venetian haze.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Bearing in mind that it's been a while since I visited the canon, this takes place during the Venice trip as written in the book. With some obvious liberties.
> 
>  **Content warnings** : brief reflection on period-typical homophobia, flamboyant (but unactualized) self-destructive behavior, and non-graphic (and brief) description of sex (beginning with the sentence "In a daze..."). No happy endings.
> 
> The title is from the poem "All Secrets of Past Tense Have Just Come My Way" by Richard Brautigan.
> 
> The original version of this can be found [here](http://ababelofprose.tumblr.com/post/150744830615/17-for-the-mini-fic-meme-with-a-pairing-of-your). Thanks to [realisaonum](http://realisaonum.tumblr.com) for the prompt.

In Venice they danced like drunkards.

Which, Charles rather supposed, they were. Drowned not only in honey, but in wine and good food and the sweet lapping Adriatic, they roamed that labyrinthine island like the first explorers of uncharted land.

At night they lit candles and drank from open bottles, languorous into a loose-limbed dawn. When the noontime sun reached its sobering zenith they drifted into uneasy, parched sleep; upon twilight’s arrival, they rose to revel again.

They had come ostensibly to see Lord Marchmain and that they did. Charles was at once charmed and discomfited by the lord’s mistress, whose given name was Cara. She spoke uneasy truths like a kept Cassandra. For his part Sebastian seemed unsettled by his father’s company and twisted himself into high-pitched knots whenever he spoke.

On this particular evening they dined late at the lord’s palazzo. Sebastian drank too much and afterward they traipsed along the waterside. They had taken up adjoining rooms at a suitable establishment on the Grand Canal and it was there they headed. Sebastian danced ahead, delirious.

“I will have to fish you out the canal if you keep on like this,” Charles laughed as Sebastian wobbled along the water’s edge.

They made it back, dry in only one sense of the word. Once they were safely ensconced in their quarters, Sebastian poured two measures of liquid amber from a decanter. He held one out to Charles and said impishly, “Drink me.”

Charles did. They drank and danced. He found himself transfixed by Sebastian, that mad, mad boy with the glittering eyes. The air grew heady with laughter and drink and the sweetness of eternal summer broiled. When it grew too humid in the little jewel of a room, Sebastian threw open the wide windows and stepped into the night.

“Don’t you ever wish you had wings,” Sebastian said. He leaned perilously over the balcony. With one hand he clung to his sloshing glass and with the other he carelessly wrapped around the wrought iron railing.

“Sebastian!” Charles said, a little more loudly than intended, as he rushed out to the balcony. He took a heavy sip from his own glass and forced some semblance of carefree detachment onto his next words. “Do be careful, that crystal must be frightfully expensive.”

“Hold onto it for me, then. Or else I shall drop it.”

Sebastian offered the glass to Charles. Their fingers brushed as it changed hands; a little of the amber spilled over the crystal lip, wetting Charles’ fingertips.  Sebastian, perched atop the railing, dangled his feet in the air above the canal. He leaned forward, and then back, and then forward again. His arms strained at the railing and the motion made Charles feel sick.

“Sebastian,” he said again. “Wouldn’t you like to come back inside.”

“I really wouldn’t,” Sebastian said. He had put on that sing-song voice he only used when he found someone or thing irksome. Charles chafed to be on the receiving end of even this light mockery; he much preferred being in on the joke.

Sebastian now stood on the little stone ledge between the railing and the air. When he leaned forward he resembled one of a carved figure at the prow of a great ship. He looked straight from myth.

“You see,” Sebastian said after a while. He had a habit of this - of beginning _in media res_. “I really should like to fly.”

Once the desire had been spoken it seemed to take over Sebastian and he let go his left hand. He pivoted: his right hand still taut on the railing, his right foot wedged between the stone ledge and the iron. But the weight of his body swung madly in the air above the canal, and he let out a curious, strained laugh.

“Sebastian!” Charles cried. The crystal glass slipped from between his fingertips and crashed to the floor. It shattered and the spilt liquid pooled amidst the shards.

Charles rushed forward and made to grab Sebastian by whatever piece of him he could reach. For a moment, it seemed that Sebastian might resist his grasp, or drop out of sight (and existence) altogether. But he did not. He allowed himself to be pulled in.

“What are you doing, are you mad,” Charles said, breathing hard from the exertion of pulling Sebastian back over the railing. Sebastian was slight but not weightless.

“Who isn’t, these days,” Sebastian said carelessly.

It was this precise quality that so enraged Charles. How careless they all were, simply because they could afford to be. He trembled with this strange anger - this desperate fury - and he shook Sebastian by the shoulders.

“You’re terrible,” he cried out. “You mustn’t do such a thing.”

“Whyever not.“

“You frighten me,” Charles replied without thinking. But as he said it he knew it to be true.

Sebastian looked up at Charles, who became suddenly conscious of how intimate the distance between them was, how little distance at all. Charles had pulled Sebastian in and pinned him against the railing, and he still held him by the shoulders. They seemed to breathe the same air.

“I’m horribly sorry,” Sebastian said. He did not sound it.

“But why would you,” Charles said, leaving the question unfinished.

Sebastian seemed impossibly faraway.

“Why wouldn’t you.”

It was too much. Something akin to fury unfurled in Charles.

“You are always doing that. Giving a question for an answer and expecting me to be charmed by your wit. Well, damn it, I am not. Even if everyone else has been. You do know that you are breakable, yes? If you were to break there would not be money in the world to fix you. You’re a mere mortal, the same as I. And I do not wish to lose you to some folly.”

This little speech flew off Charles’ lips with such speed and when it had gone he rather wished he could have it back. He meant it, every last word, but it was too much. For all the old guard’s charges of hedonism, Sebastian and his ilk were just as wary of emotional truths as their fathers, and their fathers before. Charles felt that he had laid himself bare and it was quite uncomfortable.

Sebastian’s eyes, which were so very large, were the exact mirror of the canal below. In color and in murkiness alike. Charles tried very hard to breathe but it seemed suddenly that there was no air left in the world.

The silence was unbearable.

“Sebastian,” he tried.

After a pause, Sebastian returned his name: “Charles.”

But Charles had not thought of what to say next. He could apologize - he could blame it on the drink or the strange Venetian haze - in fact he could offer to bring Sebastian another glass and they could drink it away - or he could make his goodnights now - and then they could wake the next morning and speak nothing of this mutual flight of both fancy and reason.

He spoke none of those things, and in fact spoke not at all. That thing akin to fury had taken root and grown hotter still and he felt desperate. Desperate to prove Sebastian wrong on a point he had not yet spoken. Desperate to prove to himself that Sebastian was alive and well and fully of body - and even though he held him in his own hands, it was not enough.

Without further thought – careless at last – he acted.

He let his hands fall from Sebastian’s shoulders to settle around his waist. Sebastian started at this simple touch - and even opened his mouth to speak, but Charles pulled him close. 

He met Sebastian’s lips with his own. They kissed, at first tentative but soon without any reservation. Charles felt that perhaps this was inevitable; perhaps this was fate; perhaps there was an impossible touch of the divine to their union. 

It was Sebastian who pulled away first. “If we’re going to carry on like this, perhaps not in full view of the heavens,” he said, breathless.

“Yes,” Charles said.

In another such story, this halting moment might have ruptured the fine alchemy that stretched gossamer-like between the two of them. But in this story, that is not the case. The spell was not broken. Charles took Sebastian by the hand and they fell back into the room, drawing the doors shut and letting the curtains loose.

In a daze, under the influence of substances both natural and otherworldly, they kissed and kissed again. They pulled at each other’s clothes with clumsy fingers.

“You are beautiful,” Charles said.

“You are silly,” Sebastian said.

Sebastian got bare first. Charles ran his palms down the fine fair skin and felt momentarily like weeping. He was not sad but simply full of feeling.

“Are you alright,” Sebastian whispered.

“Yes.”

They touched one another reverently and giddily. When Sebastian bit at the hollow of his ribs, Charles’ vision went cloudy as a smoke-filled room. Sebastian moaned, long and low, when Charles wrapped a hand around his length. They came in each other’s hands, whispering and laughing into the dark room. First Charles, and then Sebastian.

“Did you – “ Charles broke off.

“Yes.”

When they fell asleep, their limbs tangled.

 

* * *

 

The sun rose the next morning and illuminated the scene. Charles lay wincingly on the bed, naked save the bedsheet, and looked around at the room.

Sebastian stood before the windows to the balcony - the doors were shut, but the curtains had been pinned back. He seemed transfixed by the sight of Venice below, and his fingers moved slowly around the buttons on his shirt. His clothes were fresh.

“Sebastian,” Charles said. “That light is truly miserable. How on earth are you even upright at this hour?”

“The view is splendid,” Sebastian said. His back remained to the room.

“I’m quite sure it is but it is still ungodly,” Charles replied. He sank back into the pillows and let his eyes fall shut.

The memory of the night previous was of course hazy and altogether sodden with sweet wine and sweeter liquor but he remembered it all. He remembered the taste of Sebastian’s lips on the balcony and the feel of his hands at his clothes and the sight of him below (and above and around and all over) his body in this bed. He remembered the crescendo of pleasure and the warmth of Sebastian’s breath at the back of his neck as they had drifted into shared sleep.

He wondered how he ought to feel about the whole affair. He knew abstractly that homosexuality was something to be found disgusting but he had never quite managed that displeasurable reaction. He had known of Sebastian’s own proclivities for quite some time and of course there were others at university. Anthony, for one and certainly not for all. He had never thought that he himself might be so inclined and yet clearly - clearly - he had been. He had not put words to it but of course – his frantic rushing to Sebastian’s side, that wise old wine. He could not deny, not at least to himself, not in this bed, that he had wanted to press his lips to Sebastian’s for some time now. That he had wanted all that followed. 

He thought briefly of Julia. He touched two fingers to the remnant bruise at his side. 

“Sebastian,” Charles said again. “We ought to discuss last night, don’t you think.”

These words at least turned Sebastian’s head.

“Ought we,” he replied.

Charles bristled, both at that Sebastianism and at the memory of his anger the night previous. Something in Sebastian immediately closed up and Charles knew instinctively that he had been misunderstood.

“Sebastian, you see, I - “ he began hastily.

“It’s perfectly alright, Charles,” Sebastian said, as if Charles had not even spoke. “There’s nothing at all to speak of.”

“No, Sebastian, that’s - “

“Really, Charles,” Sebastian said decisively, cuttingly. He crossed the room and plucked a silken necktie off the dresser. He hung it loosely around his neck and was reaching for his jacket as he continued. “There is no need to be so dreadfully boring about it. A night lost to time, that’s what we’ll say. And soon we shall forget all about it.”

Whatever lasting strands of the night’s gossamer had snapped in the cruel light of day. Sebastian slipped on his brown leather loafers.

“Sebastian!” Charles exclaimed. He sat up in the bed but immediately the room began to swim. “Will you just, just stop for one moment. My head is absolutely pounding.”

Sebastian put on one of his little smiles, which Charles hated for they were all artifice. “Charles, you really are being _such_ a bore. Which is an awful shame because you had been so interesting. I’ve forgotten all about it. We shan’t ever have to speak of it again - I see how it upsets you. Consider it drowned at the bottom of the canal.”

**Author's Note:**

> I can be found on [tumblr](http://ababelofprose.tumblr.com).


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